


Hidden Kiss

by bleedcolor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedcolor/pseuds/bleedcolor
Summary: Written for Hippocrate460's prompt 'first kiss.'The first and last time his mother kisses him is on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 40
Kudos: 223





	Hidden Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hippocrates460](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/gifts).



> Written for Hippocrates460, who I promised a drabble. It took 6 months, but it's technically 20 drabbles, right?

The first and last time his mother kisses him is on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. 

In the years afterwards, Severus has time to regret the way he goes wide-eyed and still under the awkward gesture. Time to regret the way he pulls away, screwing up his face in distaste, and time to learn that no matter how bitterly he regrets, there is nothing that can change the past. There is nothing that can change the decisions made in the agony of a moment. Severus cannot change the rough words he says, anxious and mistrustful, cannot stop the way his mother’s expression folds into sullenness. 

He is eleven and eager to leave for the freedoms of school, to dive into the world of magic, to escape his parents’ vicious shouting. He is too old, he believes, for his mother to begin mollycoddling him, when she has never bothered to care before. Especially when there are so many witnesses surrounding them, none of whom are being treated to performances of affection as unseemly as the one he feels he’s suffered through. The corner of his mother’s mouth flattens and curls into itself as he pulls away, a retreat, and he wonders for many years after if that kiss had been hidden away there all along, just waiting for its moment to be passed along. 

Sometimes he wishes he’d never known it existed— you can’t miss what you’ve never had, after all.

His second first kiss comes nearly a year later, in the unrelenting heat of late July. The summer is unusually brutal, with scorching, sun-filled days, but Severus still spends as much time as he can outdoors, away from the musty confines of Spinner’s End and away from his father’s temper. Lily’s lips are saccharine sweet, sticky and strawberry flavored from the ice lollys they nicked from Willoughby’s shop. 

Both of their mouths are still chilled from their ill-gotten treats and the back of Severus’ mind ticks into a frenzy, cataloguing stimulation: the way Lily’s nose nudges into his cheek and the strange almost slickness of her lips; the faint smell of her shampoo as her hair falls forward over her shoulder and the sudden prickles of sweat that bead up along the nape of his neck; the way all the sounds of summer have been swallowed up by the buzzing in his ears. 

The sun is low on the horizon and Lily will have to go home soon, while Severus will wait until the last possible moment before he slinks back to his father's house. He feels the warm puff of her breath against his mouth when she pulls away and pauses, an inch or two from his face, gaze fixed on his.

“Well?” she asks finally, impatient and bold as any Gryffindor should be. Severus blinks, thoughts all abruptly vanishing from his mind. He has no idea what she wants him to say, no idea why she’s kissed him, not really. She’s never even hinted that she might want to. His mother had kissed him goodbye for the first time and then vanished. 

Lily’s parents had been the ones to pick him up from the train station at the beginning of summer, worried frowns creasing their brows. Severus hadn't even noticed anything was amiss, too busy discussing plans for the summer with Lily. He hadn’t had any idea that his mother was gone until his father had met him at the door. Panic claws at his throat, when he thinks of Lily leaving him. He opens his mouth.

“I don’t like strawberry,” he says finally, the first words he can push past the ball of lead in his throat. For a moment Lily’s expression goes still, shuttered in a way he hasn’t seen before, and then she rolls her eyes and shoves hard at his shoulder.

“See if I share with you again, then,” she grumbles, and flops into the grass beside him. Neither of them speak again as the late afternoon light lengthens into early evening shadows and it's time for Lily to go home. As she stands and dusts herself off, Severus can still feel the panic thrumming in his ears. Years later he still cannot stomach the flavor of strawberries.

“See you tomorrow, Sev,” she calls out behind her, flicking one last stray piece of grass from her shirt sleeve.

Lily leaves. Of course Lily leaves, just as surely as his mother had years before, and Severus has no one to blame but himself. 

He has hardly finished speaking his vow to protect the boy, Lily’s child, his chest aching with the weight of his guilt and his throat raw with his despair, when a high, reedy cry emerges from the room adjoining Dumbledore’s office. Severus’ eyes dart to Dumbledore, who inclines his head towards the door.

“We’re still trying to arrange matters for his care. He is safe at Hogwarts just for now.”

Without thinking, he is on his feet, stumbling toward the room, propelled by instinct and need. This small remnant of his friend, this broken piece that he has sworn to keep safe, is all that he has left. Severus’ need to see the child will not be denied. 

A House-elf, standing next to the makeshift crib, squeaks and pops out of existence as he sweeps into the room and the child startles, falls backwards on the mattress from where he was standing against the rail, and gives another cry, looking up at Severus with watery eyes. Dumbledore did not lie; the child’s eyes are the same color and shape as Lily’s, but the riot of black fuzz sticking up from his head is a different sort of ghost entirely.

The boy whimpers, but when Severus makes no move from the doorway where he stands, staring, climbs clumsily to his feet and takes a wobbling step back to the crib railing. He holds out his arms, hands opening and closing with his demand to be held, the universal sign language of the well-loved child. Severus obeys, unthinking, and steps forward to lift Harry Potter into his arms.

The boy is lighter than he expected, but more surprising is the way he immediately folds himself down against Severus, tucking his face against his throat and babbling out several incoherent, teary sounds. A small hand winds itself into several strands of hair and yanks, but he cannot find it in himself to protest. Another low sound emerges from the child, this one more miserable than the last, and when Severus looks down to meet watery eyes, he finds he cannot help himself.

If the boy's first kiss in this new, broken world is glossed with the salt of tears and tucked away in the silky strands of his hair… Well, he'll never remember, Severus thinks, as he presses his lips to dark curls and breathes in the warm, milky scent of infant.

And he doesn't. 

Harry Potter grows up with no memory of any kisses that came before. Not the sweet, lingering kisses his mother would press to the crown of his head as she held him wrapped in the safety of her arms, not the playful, smacking kisses his father would nuzzle into his cheeks just to hear him shriek with laughter, and certainly not a single kiss, lain close to his brow, from a man with dark, sad eyes.

Instead, the first kiss Harry recalls is the meaty thud of his cousin’s fist against his cheekbone. The next is Dudley’s knuckles grinding into his nose, followed by a slick gush of blood and the grit of playground sand into his mouth. When it is over, when their teacher pulls them apart, Harry’s face is swollen, red bruises deepening on pale skin like marks of lipstick. For the first part of his life, it is all the gentleness he knows.

In the Dursley household, softness is reserved for Dudley alone. Once, Petunia crowds him against the wall of his cupboard, sharpening her tongue on the shreds of him for spilling his breakfast milk, and as his shoulder blades kiss the unyielding wall behind him, he wonders if it's what a hug might feel like. At night, in cramped darkness, Harry wraps his thin, scratchy blanket around his shoulders and tries to imagine a world without the hard points of Petunia’s fingers digging bruises into his arms.

It's a world that comes with his 11th birthday, and for weeks afterward Harry thinks he's dreamed the heavy weight of Hagrid's hand tousling his hair. The first time Ron throws his arm around Harry's shoulders, he tenses in anticipation for the stinging smack that must follow and they make their way all the way into the transfiguration classroom before he realizes it's not coming. The Gryffindor common room is suddenly an adventure of playful wrestling and piling close on the comfortable sofa to study, brushing shoulders and nudging elbows. After they win their Quidditch match against Slytherin the Weasley twins lift him onto their shoulders and parade him around in victory. 

When Hermione brushes a goodbye kiss to his cheek before they exit the Hogwarts' Express, Harry almost forgets that he's never felt anything as soft as the brush of lips against his cheekbone.

Hogwarts comes with its own troubles, of course. Ron and Hermione both accept him, and the Weasley family. But Harry often wonders if anyone else sees him for who he is. _Famous Harry Potter_ , they mutter in the corridors. _The Boy Who Lived_. Even Sirius' rough hugs hold a ghost between the two of them. 

When Cho kisses him in the Room of Requirement, lips damp and salty, Harry is confused at first, and then resentment tangles itself up in the pit of his stomach. Is it too much to want to be loved for who he is, rather than for the memory of someone else?

The next kiss Harry takes for himself, swept up in the moment. Ginny's weight is warm against him and relaxes the sick feeling that has been twisting in his chest the whole year. It's grown greedy, the jealous, starving monster in the back of his mind, and for a few months Ginny's love feeds it like sunshine on a blooming vine. 

It doesn't last. Ginny wants something more than Harry is, still harbors her childhood infatuation with someone he isn't. And for his part, Harry finds he wants Ginny's safety and happiness more than he needs her at his side. They say their goodbyes in the lingering pall of Dumbledore's funeral and despite his resolve, wrapping the cold loneliness of the world around him again is a bitter feeling.

The cold shroud lifts in the middle of the Forest of Dean, in the chill of winter, following a silver doe through the darkness. Before the patronus fades into nothingness, it nudges its muzzle against his cheek and warmth flows into Harry for the first time in months. Not even his dip into the icy waters of the lake moments later can wash it away.

Later, when the war is over and Voldemort is gone, when the secret of the doe is lain bare, confusion floods into all the spaces the warmth left behind. _Snape_. All this time, Snape has been silently protecting him, all these years, dedicated to Harry and the memory of a childhood friend. And only by the slimmest breath of chance has the man survived the ripping wounds that Nagini left in his throat, only by the slimmest breath of chance will he live to make decisions in his newfound freedom. 

Harry Potter spends quiet weeks at his bedside in the infirmary and Severus Snape slowly recovers. In the weeks and months and years to come they each find themselves still inextricably linked, repelled and attracted like magnets, like planets, and inevitably, like lovers. Wherever Harry goes, Severus must follow and wherever Severus stays, Harry must return to. They learn each other and, slowly, they learn themselves.

The first kiss, the only kiss, comes from out of the blue many, _many_ endless days later. the light brush of Severus' lips against Harry's cheekbone as they lean close over the same book, discussing the relative merits of a new shield charm. It comes when Harry turns and presses their mouths together eagerly, stealing this kiss far more greedily than any kiss that came before it. 

It is the first kiss and the last kiss, the first of a thousand, a hundred thousand, of a lifetime of kisses to follow and the last first kiss either of them will ever need.


End file.
